|
This week we set the stage for exploring language and literacy issues by focusing on No Child Left Behind, its emphasis on standardized tests, and its impact upon language and literacy learners in the U.S.
Try responding on the discusison forum: What do you see as the strengths and limitations of the No Child Left Behind policy? Have you felt its impact? For those teaching in other countries, how does the situation in the U.S. relate to your situation? For those who have been students in other countries, how does the situation here relate to your experience? Enjoy..... |
Impact on me: None? I can only imagine.
South Korean High School experience. Teaching University. English in South Korea. Monoculture vs new Multiculturalism.
Learning Korean in Korea. The grammar translation method. GIC classes.
Language learning and literacy have been impacted significantly by public policy and changes in technology. Technology changes quickly and is governed by the market; policy is a longer process that should be reflective and not significantly influenced by economic criteria, but by educational practices, learning theory, and academic excellence. The No Child Left Behind (NCLB) policy is an attempt to provide public education to a diverse country in a time of significant historic change.
A strength of NCLB is that any policy is better than no policy, especially recognizing the basic building blocks of education - that of language. Language facilitates (or hinders) all content areas. The NCLB policy does not explicitly contain language that is exclusionary. The policy also recognizes that there are learners of different needs and backgrounds. But looking closer at the policy we can identify weaknesses that are critical to the implementation of this policy.
Language used in the NCLB policy implicitly segregates. In No Child Left Behind: Repealing And Unpeeling Federal Language Education Policy In The United States by Bruce A. Evans and Nancy H. Hornberger (2004), the authors point out that NCLB uses language that identifies discourse as 'language as a problem.' This approach sets up those outside the 'official' language as being remedial and require that they meet standards with the official language. These requisites are created without sufficient theoretically underpinnings about language theory. Additionally, a weakness is the business focused discourse of the policy; it has an insufficiently academic focus. This discourse sees life that is controlled by an industrial paradigm. This is not the case; we live in a post-industrial society with information and technology as the paradigm that is framing our lives. The NCLB also inadequately addresses interpersonal aspects of education. While attempting to be holistic, it actually becomes micromanaging in its use of test scores. It leaves no room to grow or change while educators and administration learn to better educate.
There are some opportunities that have emerged from NCLB. Because it is controversial, it creates public conversation about fairness, equality, access, education, and testing. Discussion is better than no discussion. It does create work and jobs although for a limited sector, the test taking industry. An opportunity can also be attention to learners who may otherwise not receive institutional attention. NCLB makes all educators in school interested in students that would otherwise not receive their attention.
While opportunities can be identified, threats are more obvious and more intimidating. Because language policies are made by an exclusive board, there is no system in place to correct policies or gather feedback to effectively or efficiently improve policy. This creates a closed system that does not reflect reality. Despite the lofty name of the policy, No Child Left Behind, learners do get left behind, categorized, and stigmatized. Teaching to the test creates disengaged learners instead of active citizens and creative people for the job market. It creates an apathetic public.
While I have had no direct experience of NCLB, I work in a country that is significantly controlled by test taking culture. My Korean students are products of a Confucian-based learning system which focuses more on codes of behavior than the content of learning. In a typical Korean classroom, the teacher is “god” and the students show their respect by regurgitating to the letter what their teachers have taught them. Emulation without creativity or synthesis is rewarded. Surpassing, tweaking or challenging the teacher’s knowledge is penalized through alienation by peers, ridicule and shame by the teacher and perhaps physical punishment by the teacher or parents. Rote memorization is the primary communication method of what is being “learned” in the classroom. The students who come to my class as a university student are masters of memorization – for classroom work, for exams, and for grades. My students entire life is controlled by test taking.
The most significant test is the university entrance exam. Their score will determine which university they get into; their university will determine the social capital they have access to. Tests on TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) will determine what job interviews they will get - even if they will never use English in their job. While the NCLB pigeon-holes learners in America, it is nothing like the unfairness and stress of Korean educational culture. It enflames me when I hear Obama recognize Korea as an educational system to be emulated. Test scores don't show the bullying, the suicides, the dysfunction of having no life while you are a teenager so when you get to university you just party and drink. In an American university, if your partying impacts your grades, there is a consequence - you get kicked out. In a Korean university, you can party all you want; you did the hard part - you got in! Now you just need to depend on your network to get you a job, not your grades or school performance. This, of course, is not the case for everyone, but slackers are regularly tolerated as long as they were able to get the right test score.
http://creately.com/Free-SWOT-Analysis-Templates#swot_creately
SWOTAnalysis of NCLB
South Korean High School
http://chronicle.com/article/For-Expat-Professors-in-South/128951/
http://www.koreanhighschool.com/
http://www.greatschools.org/students/academic-skills/2427-South-Korean-schools.gs
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,2094427,00.html
http://asiasociety.org/education/learning-world/south-korean-education#comment-8655
Testing
http://www.toeic.or.jp/toeic_en/pdf/newsletter/newsletterdigest107.pdf
Language Policy
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Language_policy
http://www.languagepolicy.net/
http://www.unesco.org/most/ln2lin.htm
Peer Response
Peer 1:
The part you mentioned about micromanaging resulting in the use of tests, has been a personal frusteration for me in my classroom. The micromanagement bleeds from the top down and effects the student taking the test. In talking with other educators, I have come to the conclusion that students who are able to take something they have learned and recreate it when the need calls for it, do much better than students who only are concerned about making straight A's. Students who only get straight A's, or good test scores, have difficulties in thinking outside-the-box, or thinking on their feet in real life situations.
You shared about your educational environment in Korea... How do you respond to the test taking envirnment in which you teach? What is your approach to your students? Do you challenge everything they are accustomed to? Or are you required to follow the format that is in place by reinforcing the test taking culture?
Response 1:
An important part of learning something is whether we can transfer that learning to real-life situations. This also is important for finding creative solutions, those solutions which are, as you mentioned, outside of the box. Teaching to the test, getting straight As, fulfilling any criteria to obtain an explicit goal are important in life. Often we need to do things simply because the test score gets us closer to the real goal that we have. As learners we have our own feelings to manage about whether what we are learning is going to be important in our lives.
But one thing I have learned in my life, is you never know when something you've learned is going to help you find a solution in a seemingly unrelated circumstance. When we de-contextualize and/or deconstruct learning into basic concepts and building blocks, like which is done with test taking, we can often rob the learner of the most juicy part of learning. Problem-based learning, project based learning, and inquiry based learning are more holistic for learners to cross-transfer knowledge, yet these same skills and knowledge are much more difficult to 'test', plus the test assessor can be subjective when grading responses. Testing should help us to understand the basics that we are missing and can be corrected, but it should never be substituted for more advanced learning (synthesis, for example) where it creates group think about knowledge that can be 'dissected' from several perspectives. Testing on a national standard - well, what is 'it' we want everyone in America to know, regardless of their life path? And 'knowing' and 'doing' are two different kinds of learning! (Declarative Knowledge & Procedural Knowledge) (Bloom's Taxonomy)
Because I am a university professor who teaches primarily, but not only conversational English, I can do whatever I want for my courses. I am given a very brief description of what I am to teach, and, maybe, given a textbook, which I have the authority to use or not. (I'm sure now you can understand why I am working where I am. Such autonomy, even in the US, is unusual) . In my classroom, I do a lot of praising of people who deviate from the norm. I also try to explicitly outline/scaffold my expectations - that the process of speaking English is more important that the product of having a perfect sentence. My learners usually have a lot of English knowledge but cannot produce it orally. So dealing with affective blocks to production is where I spend a lot of my 'teaching' time. Tasks and projects that are engaging, help the learner focus on the task completion as opposed to the spoken language production, reducing the block and letting them access what they know more comfortably and quickly is a typical movement of learning within my classroom. While I am an English conversation teacher to Koreans, I teach a lot of life skills to them - technology enhancements for communication, creating English hobbies where they can practice something the love in another language besides their L1, and simply having confidence to speak English regardless of spoken mistakes.
As for challenging what they are accustomed to. Well, they know their culture better than I do. But, they, like all of us, may live our culture, but may not have the meta-language to explain, talk about, or examine our culture. Because I am of a different culture and we are in Korea, there are endless examples to contrast cultural differences in the safe environment of our classroom. By stating another approach as a new way to learn and have power, I focus that their identity is not challenged by difference but that they are learning a new way to be successful in unfamiliar or uncomfortable situations. I implicitly (and sometimes explicitly) teach them how to 'code switch.' This way they use learning methods that work for their traditional Korean/Confucian based class, and other methods like that needed to be successful in my classroom.
